Hell's not in Cunnamulla. It's in Goondiwindi!

Western Queenslanders weren't too happy when a burger cafe in Brisbane offered a weekend in Cunnamulla, billed as a tongue-in-cheek 'weekend in hell'.

But the burger makers may have had more luck, and less grumpy Cunnamulla fellas, if they aimed 500kms east at Goondiwindi. After all, it's the home of the 'Hell of the West' triathlon.

"We pride ourselves on our hellish reputation, and the hellish conditions that everyone does the event in," says Pippa Bagshaw, president of the Goondiwindi Triathlon Club.

"It's a bit of a rite of passage for a lot of people. It's one of the triathlons people do to tick the bucket list."

2km swim. 80km cycle. 20km run. All in the heat of summer. "But everyone gets a rub-down at the end, and lots of watermelon!" Bagshaw says. "It takes a lot of time and training to get there in the end. And I think there might be an element of 'crazy' in there too," she laughs.

In 2014 the event will be a qualifying race for the National Long Distance Age Group Championship. Bagshaw says the event is growing, with 400 of the 650 places already taken.

"Our biggest number of entries come from southeast Queensland, and we often have people from the Northern Territory and Victoria and South Australia," Bagshaw says. "We even occasionally get people from America visiting."

No word if the organisers of the 'weekend in hell' competition have booked their place in the triathlon yet. "They could enter as a team," Bagshaw says. "That'd make it a bit easier for them!"